Down with Ownership?
by Rainbow Daydreamer
Summary: Ever wondered what happens when something snaps? DizzeeLara, escape artist extraordinaire, is about to find out. JC the fire Kyrii has big dreams, but he should be careful-- they might come true. Working title.
1. Enter the Zafara

**Down With Ownership!**

I don't own Neopets, or the song "Don't Fence Me In" and DizzeeLara is fictional.

Part One:

Enter the Zafara

* * *

It was close to midnight in Neopian time, on a cold and dark night in Neopia Central. Sensible citizens shivered and pulled the curtains shut, drinking hot tea to keep out the chill. Elsewhere, however, things were somewhat different.

Not many people knew about this room, one of the few in the Adoption Centre to be out of the public's vision and not to have a view of the town square below. A single light flickered erratically on the ceiling, slightly brightening the gloom. A lone Zafara slouched with her paws behind her head, half awake, without the sight of sky and Neohomes that the other pets enjoyed. She was not bitter, despite this. She knew full well why she was in this of all rooms.

She was not one of the well-groomed, Beauty-Contest-style petsfar from it. Her fur was held back by a grimy red headband, and looked as though it hadn't been brushed in several weeks.

Despite all appearances, the Zafara was not, in fact, idle. With a loop of reddish threadthe same dull colour as her headbandtied around her left paw, she was making complex swivelling and jerking motions with that leg. An observer might have followed the thread down through a metal grating in the floor, through which light was faintly filtering. Slowly but surely, the paw was lowered to the floor until the thread had all but vanished into the grille.

Some way below, a tiny creature swung itself down towards a metal box in the room directly beneath. The boiler that heated the Pound was humming gently, but the Petpetpet was annoyed. It had been taken from its crevice in the wall and dangled about on a length of thread, not knowing where it was or what would happen to it at the hands of this clearly insane Zafara. Buzzing with fury, it launched a full-scale attack at the nearest objecta harmless looking pipepuncturing the surface and following with a minute tongue of flame.

A Meerca in a nearby room was the first to spot the orange-gold flickering across the corridor. Sniffing, she picked up the scent of smoke; there was no mistaking it.

"Fire!" she shouted as loudly as possible, trying to control her panic. "Fire! FIRE!"

A team of Scorchios had arrived, carried on the back of a scarlet Eyrie. With the help of several Petpets and a long hose they were extinguishing the small blaze which had taken hold on the fifth floor of the Adoption Centre. It wasn't dangerous; the auto-shutoff on the heating system had prevented it from spreading far.

Dr. Death and Rose, standing outside in the cold night air, exchanged frustrated looks. The Uni was surrounded by wailing pets of all species, seemingly unable to hear her reassurances that it had only been a scare and there was nothing to worry about.One of the more organised of the Pound's inmates, a blue Bruce, was attempting to take a register. "And ... Zdsdfdsdfggggg. That seems to be everyoneoh no, there's one missing!" He looked up with an expression of panic.

The Uni and Techo spoke a name in weary unison. "DizzeeLara."

"That's right," replied the bewildered Bruce. "How did you know?"

"I thought you were responsible for making sure it didn't happen again!" snapped Dr. Death as he took the stairs two at a time, his long tail and white coat flying. "Why do you think we isolated her in the first place? The diversion of a fire, panicky pets running everywhere... it's perfect! She could be anywhere in the grounds by now!"

"I never thought" Rose gasped as they continued onto the fifth flight.

The door of the isolation room was open, swinging on its hinges. Without looking at one another the two workers ran to the end of the hall, where a thick wall separated the residents from the outside world. Now, a tunnel led down through the middle of the wall. Rose dropped a pebble and heard its rattle far below. "We have to send someone down and see where it leads!" she exclaimed.

The Scorchio firefighters having left, a Petpet with a light was duly attached to a long lead. "We have to find her before she gets too far..."

"What's the furthest she ever got?" asked a Nimmo resident with an amused air.

"As far as the Neopian Bank. Come on!"

...meanwhile, a kiteline hung between the sixth floor window and a nearby tree. Seeing the two Pound guardians occupied with the hole in the wall, a secretive shadow detached herself from the window sill where she had clung throughout the incident, and swung herself onto the slender string.

DizzeeLara allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction. She had managed to get Dr. Death and Rose to look entirely the other way while she escaped. This time, she did not intend to be recaptured. Abandoning her usual route, she opted instead for a path that skirted the trees and bushes, hoping the shadowy cover would hide her from any searchers.

A light startled her and she jumped behind a tree, her fur standing on end. "Hope this isn't game over," Lara muttered under her breath. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she made out the figure of Rose with a flashlight, and breathed a sigh of relief. Rose was the easier of the two supervisors to outwit.

Her paw gripped a pebble and she hurled it into a clearing some feet away. The clatter of twigs and stones startled Rose, who ran to see what had fallen. Meanwhile, Lara released the Petpetpet she still held, letting it fly away in a fury of bright flame. The panicked searchers followed its light.

The escape was almost complete. Staying as quiet as she could, Lara scrambled into the branches of the tall tree. Like a quick, secretive shadow she was over the wall in an instant. Free.

Neopia Central was near deserted at this time of night. Lara ducked and weaved amongst the empty streets, her heart thudding in her ears, but inwardly triumphant. Almost inaudibly, she began to hum her favourite song. It wasn't, strictly speaking, a Neopian song, but it summed up DizzeeLara's attitude pretty well.

"Oh give me land, lots of land under starry skies above, don't fence me in. Let me ride through the wide open country that I love, don't fence me in..."

A light shone from a back street window, and Lara turned the corner and headed for it. This was it. It had to be.

Knocking at the door, she waited for a reply but heard nothing. Her desperation gave her daring, and she hoisted herself through the open window of the grubby building.

Inside it was warm and bright. There was a distant sound of speech, and a flickering glow from a fire somewhere. Lara crept closer, shivering at the contrast in temperature. She caught the phrase "...Neopoint-earning games..." and clambered onto the curtain-rail, looking through into the next room.

A fire-painted Kyrii stood at the centre of a circle of pets, addressing them in an uninterrupted speech. He was obviously in a very animated mood, waving his arms and speaking in a raised voice.

"...Tomorrow maybe we will..."

Lara heard no more of the speech. An enormous Green Grarrl was suddenly towering over her, claws out, looking severely menacing to the young Zafara.

"JC!" he boomed. "INTRUDER ALERT!"

* * *

_To be continued..._


	2. NANObyte

**Down With Ownership?**

**Part Two**

**NANObyte**

* * *

"Calm down, Kirst." As she struggled for breath in his grip, kicking out with paws and tail to try and escape her captor, a voice spoke from behind the threatening figure of the Grarrl. "Let me through."

Lara craned her neck to see the new speaker, whose voice was level and unemotional. The flame-patterned Kyrii from the group had left his circle and come towards her; he seemed immediately different from the pet who held her pinned against the wall, calmer and less impulsive. "Well done, Kirst. Hmmm, I see the Thieves' Guild got the wrong address tonight." She realised the last remark was aimed at her, and bridled. To be called a thief was among the worst of insults.

"Don't call me a criminal. I'm no Kad-burglar," she told him darkly, returning his glare and hoping she looked braver than she felt. His eyes were fixed on her, seeming to burn fiercely like the rest of his body.

"Ah," he replied, "but in that case, what are you?" There was a slight hint of a snigger from behind him, which she did her best to ignore. More and more pets-- a blue-feathered Lenny, a burly Skeith, a small green Tuskaninny girl in a torn floral bonnet, an elderly Scorchio-- were crossing the room to look at her, and she began to feel as if she were truly a burglar in this house. Meanwhile, the Grarrl stayed poised in front of her, every line and muscle of his body telling her that he was only motionless because of the Kyrii's words. She shuddered at the thought of what might happen if she failed to convince them of who she was.

"DizzeeLara," she whispered. "I... I escaped from the Neopian Pound tonight."

Unexpectedly, she heard a slight, ragged cheer from the outer edges of the group. A voice said "...good show, don't you think? One has to..." before being hushed by a severe glance from the Kyrii.

"Nobody ever seems to want to adopt me for long. It isn't my first escape," she continued, "but I've always been captured before I got very far and I've never... never had anywhere to go. You could say I haven't ever found my place, I guess. Until... An Eyrie told me about this place. A blue Eyrie. His name was KL- something..."

Again, there was a stir amongst the crowd. She caught the words she herself had said as they passed from Neopet to Neopet in whispers.

"You met Kail?" Now a Usul had pushed her way to the front, waving a paw for attention. "JC, I think she's on the straight-up."

The Kyrii gave her another appraising stare. "Kail generally has good judgement. Wish he was here now. You, whatever your name is-- tell us about him. And you'd better be telling the truth."

Kail...

Lara remembered. She'd been sitting as she usually did, in the confinement room at the Neopian Pound. The three-day stay in the fifth floor room was her punishment for the latest escape, but she didn't resent it. She'd always been a solitary Zafara, and this was merely an uninterrupted opportunity to plan the next escape attempt. Perhaps she should concentrate more on the exit route than on the diversion, because the temporary night-shift Aisha on the ground floor had let it slip that he was scared of Spyders-- and Amyshyna, a Lupe girl on the second floor, was in possession of one. A little persuasion and a fishing line ought to do the trick. But then there was the matter of--

"KL3512160!" She'd heard the shout from downstairs; it was Rose's voice, and she sounded frazzled. "Get back here this INSTANT, before I have to come up there with your collar!"

A collar? They'd tried to put one on DizzeeLara, months back. Eventually they'd just had to accept that no silly strip of fabric could hold a determined Neopet for long. Catches could be broken, metal chains worn through with the right kind of technique, and anything else was nothing that a quick burst of flame from the nearest Scorchio couldn't solve. She wondered who could be the latest wayward inmate; the name wasn't one she knew.

Craning her neck to see through the crack in the floorboards, Lara had watched the blue wings of an Eyrie being unsuccessfully grabbed at by Doctor Death's claws. His feathers were ruffled, and the remains of a name-card was in his beak, torn to soggy shreds. Even the fierce Techo was having trouble approaching the whirlwind of wing, beak and talon that fluttered upwards, hoping for freedom. Lara's normally noncommittal expression turned into an unplanned, widening grin. The escape plan could wait.

KL-whatever had flown up the staircase, hooves and feet clattering after him, before a diving tackle from the white-coated Techo finally forced him to land, just a few feet from the open window at the end of the corridor. The two supervisors had eventually come to the conclusion that there was nothing to do but leave the nuisance Neopet on the fifth floor with DizzeeLara, a rebellious teenage Zafara who was meant to be in isolation, until the damage that the Eyrie had done to his own room could be repaired; a hole in the ceiling and twisted wire on the door.

"Hey," Lara had offered, casually and without any particular enthusiasm, as he'd been put in her confinement room, his collar clipped on and his wings drooping in defeat. He'd responded with what could only have been the Eyrie equivalent of a shrug, and sat down with his paws folded.

After a while, she'd become aware that he was gazing at her-- not rudely, not with the annoyed look of the supervisors nor the uninterested acknowledgment of her fellow inmates. Rather, he seemed to be examining her, from her worn headband all the way down to her scuffed toenails. She shifted uneasily under his eyes.

"What are you doing up here?" he'd said, finally.

Lara had hesitated. After all, she didn't know this Neopet. However, he seemed interested and gentle enough, and as long as she was here she might as well find a way to pass the time... So she began, haltingly at first but with more and more confidence, to tell the stories of her escapes and imprisonments.

Time had passed. Isolation was no longer the word for the time spent in the tiny fifth-floor room; Lara talked animatedly to the summer-blue stranger and he listened considerately, occasionally interrupting to ask her a question. Only when she reached the end of the story of her latest escape (down the air vent, out into the gardens and as far as the pet-allocation centre two blocks away before the police, called out by a frantic Rose, caught up with her) did her voice trail off.

That was when he sat up, no longer quiet and pensive. There was a light in his eyes that reminded her of a deep blue flame, a certain air about his movement that suggested a barely hidden excitement. "Listen," he said, his voice hoarse. "Listen to me, Lara."

A few days later, KL had been moved out of the room again, downstairs into the more open part of the Pound. But Lara, who watched him go, had other things to think about now. Her mind was buzzing with ideas.

Within a week she was back downstairs, re-adjusting herself to the daylight that shone in her eyes, brighter than the lamp that cast shadows in the upstairs room. She nodded and smiled at the other inmates, offering the passing humans directions and chatting happily to visitors and reporters. Her behaviour, Rose reported with sparkling eyes and a smile of triumph, had improved massively and she was going about her normal life with quiet enthusiasm and obedience, hardly even questioning the orders she was given.

If Rose had thought about it more, she might have reflected that something was to be suspected when DizzeeLara was so quiet.

"So that's how I met him," Lara finished a little awkwardly. "You believe me, right?"

The other Neopets whispered amongst themselves. Meanwhile, the Kyrii-- JC-- looked at her for longer than was comfortable. Finally, almost grudgingly, he nodded.

"OK, DizzeeLara," he said. "Your escapes sound pretty good, and I'm not gonna question Kail's judgement. Welcome to NANObyte."

"Nanobyte?" she asked, not understanding. "What's that?"

There was a sigh from JC. "N.A.N.O.Byte," he explained in a frustrated tone. "That's the name of this group, the one I founded. It's an acronym. It stands for... Neopets Against Neopian Ownership."

"In other words..." yelled the Grarrl named Kirst at the top of his voice, turning to the rest of the group. His eyes were blazing with excitement and ferocity as he swung round, and as Lara looked into the crowd she saw that same expression in their faces. The same determination, the same loyalty, the same passion.

"Down With Ownership!" they shouted, and the room echoed with the power of the sound.


End file.
